Jose Bautista seeking six years, earns BA in Business

Toronto Blue Jays right-fielder Jose Bautista is reportedly seeking a six-year contract this offseason and recently completed his BA in business at USF

Jose Bautista is not like everybody else.

Beyond the bat flip and his piercing sunglassed stare, the 35-year-old is one of the league’s most intelligent and analytic minds, especially from a business standpoint.

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In a must-read today from Peter Gammons, we learn that Bautista recently returned to the University of South Florida to complete is BA in business, further positioning himself to succeed in the final years of his career and beyond. Which, as Gammons writes, Bautista hopes includes a six-year contract.

He’s also working to be an outlier off the field.

Father Time is undefeated, as the old saying goes, but Bautista is determined to put a ‘one’ in his loss column with a dedication to maintaining his physical performance past the age of 40 (which he hopes will happen under his upcoming deal).

This includes an offseason regimen of waking up at 5am and going through a routine of “flexibility, eyesight work, nutrition, yoga and complex weight work.”

"“I am preparing to be physically capable of doing the same,. I am preparing to defy those aging curves by my strict adherence to physical, mental and nutritional routines. When I missed time (at 31) with hip problems, I changed everything. I studied, I learned about my body, and how to keep it at peak performance levels, and how to maintain it. I study how Chip Kelly prepares his players. I do what he teaches. I do what Tom Brady does. It is about discipline and diet and strive for physical and mental states that defy aging. I love a good steak; I cannot eat red meat. There are a lot of things I love, but I cannot be who and what I want to be and eat and drink them.“It has been suggested that when I told the Blue Jays what it would take for me to sign an extension and pass up free agency (next November), it was because I absolutely believe that I will perform at my expected level past the age of 40.”"

Regression with age has been considered unavoidable in baseball, largely because so few power hitters have found a way to work around it. In a game of short-burst movements and timing, losing even a fraction of a second can derail an entire career.

As always, however, Bautista is a unique case. With his elite on-base tool and a power stroke that has  yet to show any signs of regressing, perhaps he truly could buck the trend.

Bautista does not need to be 20-years-old at age 40, but with this regimen, could he not have the body of an average 33 or 34-year-old by age 40? Stranger things have happened, and Bautista’s entire career arc is a testament to that.